Virginia M. Ayres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and heads the Electronic and Biological Nano-structures Laboratory at Michigan State University. Her research interests include the reduced dimensionality-based electronic properties of nanotubes and nanowires. Dr. Ayres earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Physics from Purdue University, and her B.A. in Physics and Biophysics from the Johns Hopkins University. She is the recipient of two NASA Faculty Fellowship Awards and of two international awards from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science and from Tokyo Institute of Technology for research and education in Japan. In 2006, she was honored with an Outstanding Alumnus Award from the Department of Physics at Purdue University.